A Whale Sank Their Boat. They Drifted 117 Days

At dawn on March 4, 1973, in the eastern Pacific, a whale hit a 31-foot wooden yacht called Auralyn. Within about an hour it was gone. Maurice and Maralyn Bailey, an English couple who had sold their house to sail to New Zealand, were left in an inflatable liferaft and a small dinghy, a few hundred miles from the Galapagos, with about twenty days of food and water and no radio. Seven ships passed them. None stopped. They drifted for the famous 117 days, and by the calendar it was really 118. This September, a whale sank another yacht in the South Pacific, and four sailors were rescued in less than a day. The two stories are usually told as a monster and a miracle. Neither one is quite right. What this covers: Four years of preparation, a 31-foot boat, and a voyage from Southampton through the Panama Canal The hour after the whale: a liferaft, a dinghy, six flares, two buckets and a first-aid kit with safety pins Rain in the Doldrums, safety pins bent into barbless hooks, thousands of triggerfish, turtles, and why there was no scurvy Seven ships that never stopped, a turtle shell full of burning clothes, and Maralyn's stubborn hope The Weolmi 306, about forty pounds lost each, and the landing in Honolulu The Essex and the Ann Alexander: why the old "monster whale" stories involved whaleships 111 collisions and 57 near misses in 44 years: what one researcher found about whales and sailboats The Tai Tam in September 2026: a beacon, a patrol plane, a container ship, and "all the right things" Why 117 days was really 118, and how the Baileys went back to sea The whale was an accident. The survival was not. Somewhere out there tonight, a sailboat and a whale are sharing the same dark water. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ❤️ It's just me making these. If this one was worth your time, a like helps more than you'd think. If not, all good. See you in the next one. Wren ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ S O U R C E S ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ THE BAILEYS Maurice and Maralyn Bailey, Wikipedia. The couple, the voyage, the gear, seven ships, the rescue, weight lost, the 118-day count and the later years. Bailey, M. and Bailey, M., 1974, 117 Days Adrift (US: Staying Alive!), Adlard Coles Nautical; reviewed by Bill King, Journal of Navigation 27(3), 404-405. The couple's own book, cited here through the review and secondary accounts. Sturges, F., 14 February 2024, review of Maurice and Maralyn by Sophie Elmhirst, The Guardian. Why the famous 117 does not match the calendar. "How a shipwreck changed a marriage," Soundings. About an hour to abandon ship, no radio transmitter, and Maralyn's optimism. "Maurice and Maralyn Bailey: a marriage finely tempered in the misery of a survival drift," Wave Train, 2025. Four years of preparation and the reported sperm whale. "Maurice and Maralyn Bailey: 117 days adrift," Docastaway. Day 8, the first ship, triggerfish, turtles, the smoke pot, paddling, and the medical findings. "Maurice Bailey talks about his 117 days adrift," Classic Sailor, 2019. Auralyn, the dinghy, and why he would go back to sea. NZ Herald, obituary of Maurice Bailey. Selling everything, and the seven ships. THE OLD WHALE STORIES Essex (whaleship) and Ann Alexander (ship), Wikipedia. 1820 and 1851, both whaleships, and Melville's "Ye Gods!" THE NUMBERS Ritter, F., 2012, "Collisions of sailing vessels with cetaceans worldwide: first insights into a seemingly growing problem," Journal of Cetacean Research and Management 12(1), 119-127. 111 collisions, 57 near misses, seven boats lost, 1966-2010. Reported cases, not a rate. "Whales at sea," Yachting World. Most whales are never seen in time. TAI TAM, SEPTEMBER 2026 New Zealand Defence Force, "RNZAF P-8A crew finds four sailors after yacht hits whale." 51 feet, the beacon alert, the patrol plane, and "did all the right things." gCaptain; CBS News; 1News; NZ Herald (September and October 2026). The bang, the dive under the hull, the expanding foam, the cut line, the container ship, and the crew of four. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ #history #ocean #survival #documentary #truestory